News From Around the Web
> Harvard researchers onsite at the Kumbh Mela, a mass Hindu pilgrimage of 30 million people held in Allahabad, India every 12 years, have created an iPad-based electronic medical record system that has gathered more than 15,000 patient records, in what is considered the largest public health dataset ever gathered on a transient population. The iPads were linked to a web-based portal that synced and collated the data, ran simple analytics, and provided real-time results, Quartz reports. Article
> In a Wall Street Journal Q&A, Congressman Michael Honda (D-Calif.), who recently submitted a bill asking Congress to create and fund a new office Office of Wireless Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, insists that the new FDA office will help and not obstruct innovation. "The tech community needs confidence in a consistent, reliable framework for wireless health," said Honda, who represents Silicon Valley. "There is no confidence [among] industry. It's nonexistent." Article
> San Francisco-based Jawbone, a provider of smart audio devices and wearable technology, announced that it has acquired Bay Area mHealth startup Massive Health. Founded in 2010, Massive Health's iPhone app, The Eatery, enables people to improve their eating habits by snapping photos of their food and receiving crowd-sourced feedback. The Massive Health website says of the acquisition: "We have been acquired by a company that not only leads in consumer products, but is the leading company in consumer health." Announcement
EMR News
> The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is establishing a new electronic records system for quality reporting by long term care hospitals. The new program, created by the Affordable Care Act, will use this system to compile and eventually publish data measuring the quality of care provided to patients in long term care hospitals. Article
Healthcare IT News
> Researchers in Israel are working to develop tiny computers that can be inserted into cells to assess their condition and independently provide an appropriate treatment. In a study published at Scientific Reports, the researchers--from the Weizmann Institute of Science--highlight the success they've had in creating a genetic device that operates independently in bacterial cells. Article
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